Ren'Py - Completed - S.H.E.L.T.E.R. - An Apocalyptic Tale [v1.0] [Winterlook]

S.H.E.L.T.E.R. - An Apocalyptic Tale [v1.0] [Winterlook]
After seeing the high evaluation and Changelog (I don't like visual novel games without actual gameplay, so I check the images and the Changelog) I decided to download this game.
Well, I don't understand how it can have such a high evaluation.
Bad characters. The characters seem to have their own characterization at the beginning, but in a few minutes the characters will all become the same, with a characterization of 0.
Visually mediocre scenes, repetitive gameplay and that does not bring satisfaction to unlock the scenes.
Mediocre history, at least they have given a motivation to the whole game, nothing original or well written, but at least a minimum of worldbuilding is there.
Personally I don't recommend the game.

Game had good story and good cgs, the characters were enjoyable to watch grow in both lust and belly size when dealing with the male main character. The town was not a particularly well made section in my opinion and the end seemed sudden.

A great game with delicious art and options for romancing or corrupting your harem-to-be. The music is nice, the world and characters are interesting enough, but getting to breed each and every single one of them is the highlight.

Hot situations, collecting the harem and progressing through the world are all enjoyable. The game has between one evening and two days of content, a bit more with any replays.

The con is that that the dialogue and descriptions could be more interesting, I found myself skipping most of them, as well as skipping the gameplay loop of having to farm the food cans initially.

All in all, solid enjoyable game! Can't wait to see what the creator makes next.

Character development
I like that the game offer the opportunity of romance and corruption. For corruption a magic pill is already a
trop but it explain why the characters are willing to do whatever MC asks for. For romance the relationship build
a bit slower, with the girl refusing sex at first, but goes into something quite personal after that.

Story
There is a main story with a possible bad end, so you can not really fuck it up on this. Based on the relation
that you develop with girls there is a different end story for them. What I did not liked is that the corruption
path is everything or nothing: you can not corrupt just one of the three main girls, which is quite a shame.


Gameplay
The game seems rushed sometimes. There are some imaged in the gallery that are actually blancks and during my first
gameplay I really taugh I missed something. Also if Keira/Melisa/Angela get pregnant the threesome/foursome option
is still available, without the change in appearance.
The music goes well with the action.

It is a game that I had on my list to play, and to tell the truth I was looking forward to playing it and I must say that... it was good...

Well in my opinion it was good, neither excellent nor disastrous, just good. The reason is simple, I feel that it developed very quickly... that is, relationships develop with few interactions and that's it... that's a bit bad from my point of view because I didn't see such a concrete evolution in terms of how it developed relationships with waifus possible.

Something that I didn't like was, that if I didn't have a guide, I wouldn't know what the hell to do, to get the harem ending, that is to say, that you don't have an internal guide of what you can do, so you could be in a loop in which you will not advance in any route. Well that's just my opinion, I like to play a game with at least an idea of what I have to do... I mean this is not a strategy game and you have to dedicate a lot of mind to it... it's a erotic/adult game...

Summary:

o Character Design/Visual: 5/5 (The art was good, there was detail in certain parts that surprised me, it was good in this area)
o Background music/sound: 3/5 (There was only background music and I think I only listen to like 3 or 4 types of songs. There is no kind of moan.)
o Plot: 4/5 (Well, I've played several games with the concept of the end of the world and this is not the first, it was good, but I feel that the concept of "End of the world" did not have any weight in the plot beyond just saying "it's the end of the world")
o Animation: 3/5 (There was really no animation as such, let's just say one frame transitions to another, but it was passable for the explicit scenes.)
o +18 Scenes: 3.5/5 (Well each waifu has a considerable number of scenes (quite a few in the main 3) however I feel there is no solid context of "the reason why you get the scene"... It may just be my taste, but I like this section I would rate it as good enough not to be bad.)
o Gameplay: 2.5/5 (What I consider the Achilles heel. It's a game of clicking and actions per day, however since the game doesn't tell you what to do internally, you can be in a loop where the story doesn't advance, so I qualify this as "you almost made it good".)
Interface: 5/5

Well, if you even have an idea of what to do, you can get the scenes fast in this game, it's a game where you don't waste a lot of time, but there really isn't anything argumentatively solid that catches your attention, beyond the scenes +18 , the reason is simple, if you only want to see +18 scenes, search the internet for images and that's it, if you play a +18 game, at least I hope I have a good context/plot/development or something like that

However, it is a normal/good game, so if you have the opportunity to play it... do it but without so many expectations

I liked everything of this game. Good story, nice character, fantastic drawings.
A lot of kink are present in the sex scenes.
You have a lot of option and route.
You also have enough freedom to go around the world. You don't have to follow absolutely the main story

Pretty good for what it is albeit a bit grindy. The art is pretty good to great, lots of heroines each with their own backstory and stereotype, decent amount of kinks but still ends up feeling a bit samey because how each girl kinda ends up the same once you finish their routes. And while the art is great the variety isn't, CGs are static with slight expression alterations and on top of that there are no voice acting, so they sometimes end up feeling a bit repetitive to wade through all the text in h scenes.
All in all I'd say this is a pretty decent repny project. There are lots to like and very little to dislike. We don't get many competed non japanes projects these days consisting of this many heroines with two different routes each where the art is good and with very little gameplay grind since there is basically no gameplay here. You basically progress by stocking up on 2 different resources that you get a small amounts everyday and as the plot progresses the quantity increases. My only gripe other than the ones mentioned above is that the main antagonist doesn't get as many events and opportunities as I would have liked.
It's definitely a 3.5 rather than a 2.5

Put simply the art is stellar in the game with good scenes and a wide variety of characters. I think if you're just looking for a good looking H game then this is perfect. That said the grind in this game is annoying beyond belief, its basically just "keep clicking until you have enough items to unlock the next scene". Maybe if there were a few minigames involved it would be bearable but as it stands there's no interesting plot, the characters are a bit one note, and the gameplay is non-existent. Its strange because the art is so good but everything else sucks. So again, if you just want sexy stuff and don't care about any of the above issues this is probably a 5/5 for you, but if you want story or gameplay this is pretty bad.

I really liked this. The art is very good and each girl is distinct, which is something that a lot of other games can suffer from. If I could give this a 4.5 I would. The only thing that I would add to improve this would be animations to the scenes. Other than that I think that this VN is almost perfect.

Each of the three main ladies stories going from a housemate to a lover was well done, I think. Angela would probably be my favorite character. Each character stood out from the others and made the setting of S.H.E.L.T.E.R. believable.

The main story was serviceable. Not terrible by any means, but it wasn't too compelling. The post-apocalyptic setting though is something that I enjoyed and not a lot of other games/VNs use it.

The moment-to-moment gameplay was nothing too special. This was very much similar to other VNs. This is more for the story and characters than it is for fun gameplay.

Overall, S.H.E.L.T.E.R. is a very enjoyable VN. I didn't run into any glaring bugs or issues with Ren'Py. The mod may cause some problems but the vanilla game ran with little to no problem for me. This is a slightly shorter VN that should be checked out. The characters are sweet and the setting as well is something underutilized for similar games/VNs.

i have been going back and forth with myself about this rating.
on the one hand the game has lots of scenes and many girls
on the other hand there is not much art to see its always just 1 photo with a couple of edits to show when the girl is doing a perverted face and when u cum in or on her.
it really turned me off big time.
i played only corruption path but i will come back and play the romance path later for all the girls.
i can understand japanese games with this kind of art output, because they have voice over for all the girls, but shelter here its just 1 photo and text, it gets extremely boring and boner killing .

The game is not perfect, it has flaws like some minor bugs regarding the decision making aspect of the game, but pretty much else is good: male protagonist, the quick pace to get in action, the art, the plot and so on. Overall it's a well rounded work which ain't groundbreaking or anything but does a great job and delivers more than most of the games in this site. Definitely worth of your time.

Good Art, quality choices, wish there was more but man is the sheriff great. Sincerely wish we had more options for the other characters but for what there is right now is good enough and a lot of content to enjoy and replay.

Excellent game, it has 4-5 hours of gameplay, multiple ends and excellent story. A lot of girls with story line and multiple conclusions, i believe if you one everything correctly there are 12 girls to relate and you can choose a corruption or love paths for each one, expect the 3 main girls that are kind a pack deal, if you choose corruption for one the others will follow the same path.
The game appears to have a lot of choices but its pretty linear with not much space for error and easy choice making (harem path is quite easy as well), this mean that you can play without a walkthrough and yet have some impact on the game. For me works perfectly.
5 stars without doubt

I dont understand how this got 5star rating. The H scenes are bad imo. and the story and gameplay is bad too? i dont know. I dont like the style either. The letters are hard to read because of the font. i really dont get it. its a very basic game without much attached to it. if only the story was hot or the scenes.

Fap-able game.

Very well drawn and there is a respectable number of scenes (you can choose where to cum).

Your choices will slightly impact the story.

If not for the abrupt ending it'd easily get 5 stars.

Of the time of writing this game is Version 1.0
Before I start the review I want to briefly go over my experience with the game so whoever reads this knows from what frame of reference I have when writing this review. I can’t remember what the game version was when I first played it (something is telling me it was version 0.31 or 0.33) but I’ve been following the game during its development. In that time I’ve grown attached to the game and the characters in it. I will admit however I’ve only done a single corruption only playthrough in that entire time, and my version 1.0 playthrough was romance only. Of the romance only playthrough I got the harem shelter and impregnated all the girls (I know I still missed a few scenes though).

Story (1/1)
The main story is simple, you leave the shelter, go find a woman, she takes you to a shelter, you deal with their problems, become mayor, and eventually take down the local bandit gang. The real meat of the story is the side character content. All of the female characters are romance / mindbreak - able, and if you play your cards right, all of them can be at the same time (the route I chose). All the characters have a sweet story and backstory (with the exception of Grace and Mia who have much shorter stories) each with multiple scenes and multiple sex scenes (most of which are repeatable). Out of the romance scenes, all of them felt genuine and made it feel like the characters love each other. As stated before I did not do the corruption scenes (I have nothing against them, I just didn’t want to do a second playthrough since I already did one back on version 0.34 over a year ago). The ending slideshow worked really well, giving all of the major decisions a short screen or two describing their outcome as well as giving a nice finality to the games ending. Overall, a very well done story, it is pretty long though so I would suggest multiple play sessions to not get tired of the game.

Art (1/1)
All of the art is in the same style, with the exception of the ending slideshow art (this is especially jarring since Tom and Oscar get slides and they are in the same style as the rest of the game). Although this isn’t specifically bad, it is worth pointing out. The game in general has all of the characters be very curvy, Kira (whose muscular) and Melisa (whose more is thinner) are portrayed as being very curvy in the games sex scenes as well as some of the other scenes. If you like curvy women, this game is the place to be. The sex scenes are very high quality with my only minor qualm being magical juices on the women before insertion. Amazing quality, would jack again.

Gameplay (1/1)
This game works really well as a Choice-your-own-adventure style visual novel, with your choices leading you down very distinct routes and the characters acting very differently if you romance them compared to mindbreak them. With the inclusion of the ending slideshow to give impact to some other decisions it feels like choice really matters. The day cycle also works really well, with time passing opening up different events and some event being misable (like pregnacancy sex scenes or characters getting pregnant at all). The only resources you need to manage are cans of food and Y-Shield, cans are currency and Y-shield lets you visit the settlement. Cans are earned from working at the bar, income from taxes, and from people in the shelter doing their jobs. You get Y-Shield from a few events, buying it from Bill, or for free if you let John out. This system is simple and does its job well.

Grammar (1/1)
For a game based on reading, having good grammar and punctuation is very important, and this game didn’t have any glaring grammar or spelling issues. If it did I missed them, either way, an easy pass.

Technical (1/1)
I only had 1 bug in the game, and that was when one of the girls (I think it was Mia) ended up saying the name of a variable instead of the settlement's name.

I only have two other technical gripes with the game. How long it takes to do anything, and pregnancy. You have to go through a lot of days in the game, mostly because events require a new day to trigger, this led to me heavily relying on the skip button towards the end game. I don’t have a solution to this, it was just an issue I had while playing. Pregnancy was something I had a pretty annoying time with. When the game lets you choose the option to impregnate, it’s really a percent chance (at least it feels like it) and some characters can’t be pregnant at the same time (like the shelter girls for example) I also personally had all of my other characters come up pregnant at the some time and missed a few scenes because of it.

Overall, this is a very high quality game that I would recommend to anyone who liked this style of game, or is getting introduced to this type of game. The developer has a lot of skill in terms of writing and I hope they continue to make games moving forward.

Story (4.5/5): It has a lot of characters and of course different stories for each one but they are really entertaining it doesn't get bored and I appreciate that it has multiple endings depending the player's choices, there's only one character that (in my opinion) has a weird story, the rest are really good.

Gameplay (4/5): It's like a sandbox game, it is really easy to interact, in my experience didn't find any bug but I would appreciate that the game include some hints for the characters or their stories

Animations (4/5): I really loved the character's designs, they all have different body types and of course different personalities but there are some scenes (non sexual) that has a bad drawing and some scenarios are really basic.

Sex stuff (5/5): The scenes and females are really hot, there are different situations and depending the route you had chosen the dialogues and scenes change.

This is a GOOD game, in my personal opinion I would add hints to advance in the character's stories because sometimes is really easy to skip some sotries or scenes and finish the game.

Short and easy. There's no challenge to it. Sex scenes are basically just 3 or 4 images on loop. The gameplay is basically just talk to everyone, choose every choice available, then sleep. Rinse and repeat until you manage to fulfill some counter for number of days passed in order to unlock more content.

Firstly, mod (multi-mod recommended) is kinda necessary to fix basic game flaws. Without this mod, game is 1/5 or 2/5.
That aside, game is pretty decent, but it has a glaring flaw to me: girls are way too easy, and generally speaking everything go the MC's way. I kinda feel like I'm playing a Miel game, if I had to make a comparison. Stick the D in girl, the poor sow instantly become addicted and pledge loyalty. No one ever try revolting.
So, well, for an apocalypse game...difficulty is ridiculously low. On that matter, I think the Y-shield thing kinda killed the story. Or at least, the way it appeared is way too easy. I mean, what's the point of doing a nuclear radiation apocalypse game if you are going to make radiation a non-issue 30 min after the start?
This also means that all characters are pretty shallow and the game ends up using a quantity over quality approach.
EDIT: changed to 2/5. Really disliked the way the game keeps on progressing which doesn't make much sense to me. There is also a bad tendency of the game to ignore previously made choice.

This is pretty much exactly what a porn game should be. Minimal grinding, lot's of characters to bone, great art. Minor complaint would be I would like more relationship progression and variety, it goes from 0 to 100 pretty fast with every character. And of course, more scenes would be awesome, but there are plenty to make it worth a playthrough or two.